But the crucial difference is: they were talented. The unemployable of today's world are often just that: unemployable. Remember the makers of buggy whips, with whom I'm sometimes compared? I believe they were talented too...

I think you missed (or ignored?) my point. These great artist's talents were NOT recognised in their lifetime. Their fame is posthumous. The point is that talent and greatness is not always immediately recognisable. But that doesn't make talent useless.

Until the 'west' ... fails to stamp down hard on the users of drugs, the very ones who fuel the market in death (you don't long produce what folks won't buy), then of course the status quo continues and even grows.

Oh, you mean the same way as prohibition in America worked so well in stamping out alcohol consumption and reducing crime. History surely proves that targeting the users is a great idea (!)

I think you missed (or ignored?) my point. These great artist's talents were NOT recognised in their lifetime. Their fame is posthumous. The point is that talent and greatness is not always immediately recognisable. But that doesn't make talent useless.Remember You didn't build that

Did anyone here say that it did?

It's the lack of it all around one that is the problem, not a surfeit of it. Talent and drive; those are the keys to the kingdom.

Oh, you mean the same way as prohibition in America worked so well in stamping out alcohol consumption and reducing crime. History surely proves that targeting the users is a great idea (!)

"2. If there were no market for drugs, who would produce them and kill to maintain the industry? It has always been impossible to control production, mainly because much of it is abroad, but controlling the domestic buying market should be relatively easy, if the will were ever there. Corruption knows many friends, at all levels. Just think of the lack of action by the financial watchdogs in 2008 if you doubt: they were there, lying in their boxes, preferred not to bark, but kept an eye instead on the food plates being filled. Today some are advisers to government, instead of in prison."

Yes, that's what I already indicatd in my post, quoted above.

The ability to resolve the problems are, and were, there - it's the political will and lack of honesty that's core to the problem at home. Start there. Don't give the corrupt lookers in the other direction great jobs - jail them.

That which you describe/quote isn’t really an organized conspiracy, the idea of which appears to be being propagated.

Man is, by nature, an unfriendly sort of animal, much like the rest of the predators. That happens to be the purpose of civilization: the attempt to reconcile, or at least keep within (and not include!) homicidal limits, the relationships that we all have to endure. Sit in the subway, compete for a taxi at the hospital gates when you have made the call but somebody else says that they did the ordering; reach for your credit card at the supermarket to pay for your weekly shopping when the guy behind you has bought a couple of cans of beer and nothing much else. The hatred towards strangers is palpable; if looks could kill there’d be no crowds.

Haves and have nots are the norm and always will be. It’s how life is, and no amount of envy and political posturing ever changes that – trials and revolutions enough have been attempted already, all of which turn into nothing but a redistribution of the available goodies to yet another select grouping. I’d rather they stay with those who create them than with those who steal them from the former.

Rob C

If you could look a little further back, your opinions could have been a little different. Or simply read what Christopher Columbus wrote about the native Indians and their society on his first encounter about 500 years ago.

If you could look a little further back, your opinions could have been a little different. Or simply read what Christopher Columbus wrote about the native Indians and their society on his first encounter about 500 years ago.

hey gulag,good post-just don't forget proof is meaningless to many men.You can't beat it into them. You can't wipe out a culture.The thing we haven't been told,is that the people that were here first have their own stories and history.Legends that may be entertaining, and to some even enlightening.There's this one story,it doesn't end the way everyone likes to think...basically the rotting stench that America started out as, continued unabated through the purposeful deaths of millions,and continues on treating its young like a starving feral cat-well, that america dies. In my view it couldn't happen soon enough.

If you could look a little further back, your opinions could have been a little different. Or simply read what Christopher Columbus wrote about the native Indians and their society on his first encounter about 500 years ago.

And looking even a tiny bit further back, voilà: no people at all!

Maybe that's where evolution ultimately leads us - square 1.

However the condition that counts is the present one - we can't do much about the past but either accept or rewrite it, as so many did and continue so to do.

I watched Snowden Snr praise Putin today... Putin, that head of the political culture still killing journalists. Has Snowden Snr a finely developed sense of irony! (And to think they say that Americans don't do irony!

They (America) don't do much irony and when you do as an individual, you usually have to tell whomever your talking to that what you just said was ironic. Otherwise, you might be looking down the barrel of their 45 automatic.

As an expat American (living in the UK) I've been very impressed with the American TV series, Breaking Bad which was shown a few years ago. Laced with dark humour and irony. Something's changing!

I watched Snowden Snr praise Putin today... Putin, that head of the political culture still killing journalists. Has Snowden Snr a finely developed sense of irony! (And to think they say that Americans don't do irony!

Yes, we do. Can you say MPAA? If not, this ought to help. America, where freedom of your speech only works for those who approve of it.

And the entire Snowdon saga is awash in irony, which began with the ironic Patriot Act.

indeed... and then there is a political culture where mass shootings are rampant and so normal that they are happening 10 times more often than some journalist is actually killed in Russia ( Obama then is a head of it ) ...

Careful Rob, that's rather like standing in the centre of Glasgow and shouting the Scots don't do happy.

Thanks for the warning, Keith, but standing in the centre of Glasgow shouting anything is fraught with danger - much as parking a blue or green car in the wrong areas. But the areas may have changed lo these pst few years: the south-side (these 'sides' make me think of Top Cat) has developed a large Roma population where I used to park as my kids went for their music lessons; another expensive area of mansion houses and flat-conversions of same has become Little Asia (you can't accuse those guys of not working or of having poor business heads!) and were I to return to buy, I'd be lost without family advice! So far, they always advise that I don't, but there's no guarantee that's not from a senses of self-preservation. I love family; family is great, family is strength and also very expensive at times.

Actually, I'm not really sure if the Scots do do happy very much; we seem to have a penchant for inspection of the collective navel, weep at funerals and fight at weddings, but happy... have to ask an American tourist.

indeed... and then there is a political culture where mass shootings are rampant and so normal that they are happening 10 times more often than some journalist is actually killed in Russia ( Obama then is a head of it ) ...

Assuming that a question, then no: O'Bama (my little Irish joke) doesn't order or condone that, which is rather different.

Assuming that a question, then no: O'Bama (my little Irish joke) doesn't order or condone that, which is rather different.

neither did Putin... but like Obama he just was not able to stop somebody else from doing that :-) ... you do not want to blame Obama for actions of mass shooters, OK... why do you want to blame Putin for somebody else killing a journalist ? may be you mixed Putin with Kuchma (ex President of Ukraine, related Gongadze case) ... do you have examples of Putin condoning or giving orders ? other than some allegations of opposition (remember Iraqi opposition figures feeding tales about WMD - that shall teach you that people will tell everything when they want to be paid)